Seagate unwraps Momentus XT HDD, SSD hybrid

Confirming last week's speculation, Seagate has unveiled a hybrid mechanical and solid-state drive, uniting the best of both realms: speed and affordability. The 2.5-inch Momentus XT is available in 250GB, 320GB and 500GB capacities, and has 4GB of SLC NAND flash memory onboard. The drive features what Seagate calls "Adaptive Memory," which automatically moves frequently accessed data to the flash memory, thus allowing the Momentus XT to outpace standard platter drives.

As a laptop drive, the capacities are acceptable but they still fill a niche between SSD and HDD. Can't see how any definition of game changing would fit. Still - it's a good option for laptop owners who can't afford a SSD and want better performance that 5400RPM drives (which are abysmal for business!).

I am interested to see the difference between this and a regular drive when playing games such as crysis, are load times really reduced? are we able to get any benches Techspot or any links to some dividebyzero?

I've been looking for a SSD for a media center computer for low noise and heat, but even though I see good deals, I just never bought one. This seems like a great alternative. Sure its not a SSD,but it would provide speed for the OS and media programs, and then a good deal of storage for media, or a DVR program.

Great idea. Depends how well it does its job of moving frequently used data onto the solid state part of the disk for fast access. I'm guess many people looking at a lower price point might buy this rather than buying a small SSD and manually moving data on and off of it all the time.

hi there you are right if this technolgy is vrealy as great as claimed too be netbooks notbooks gaming laptops and diffently the next generation gaming consoles like hard core gamers realy want fast and low cost consoles be perfect for xbox 720 and ps4 oh by the way on disovery channel saying the worlds fastest eltric enginge spins at a whopping 150,000 rpm soo that can mean a 150,000 rpm hybride hard drive can be just few years away get 3 150,000 rpm hdd hybride in raid 3 450,000 rpm's